American History Unfurled: How Our Flags Shaped Our History and Our Hi

Mary Pickersgill, Francis Scott Key, Some English Sheep, and the Creation of the Original “Star-Spangled Banner” and Our National Anthem

Perhaps only in the United States of America could people and animals with backgrounds as varied as the ones which distinguished Mary Pickersgill, Francis Scott Key, and a handful—the exact number can never be known—of English sheep from one another have found themselves thrust together as products of both chance and crisis and still proven themselves equal to the moment. And perhaps you find it hard to believe that Pickersgill and Key could respond to their national crisis citizens’ most treasured relics, symbolizing that nation’s citizens’ both awe-inspiring courage and relentless perseverance against even the most overwhelming odds. Yet, during the War of 1812 between the Americans and the British, the contributions of Pickersgill, Key, and the group of sheep from some unknowable and probably undiscoverable location in England worked symbiotically to do just that. [Photos: Mary Pickersgill, Francis Scott Key, and Some English Sheep—all public domain, I would blur out the mountain background of the sheep photo.]

By the conclusion of the War of 1812—the last battle of which wasn’t fought until January 1815—the US narrative and the nation’s most likely future course had changed forever. By war’s end, the Americans had boldly confirmed the collective fortitude many of their parents had displayed during the Revolution and ejected Britain—then the world’s most powerful nation with the world’s most powerful navy—from the US forever, thus setting up their nation as the one country in the world which was far and away most likely to emerge as the world’s next great power. And, at the end of the day, we largely have Pickersgill and Key—and, of course, our handful of nameless English sheep—to thank for both helping to inspire the effort that precipitated these amazing developments and memorializing the spirit that defined this effort for countless future American generations. Today, whenever we glance pridefully at any US flag or fervently sing the National Anthem at a political or sporting event, we enjoy the fruits of this unlikely and largely makeshift collaboration. [Service Members Stretch Out An American Flag at An MLB Game, public domain]

Besides sharing a native country and the 1770s as their decade of birth, Mary Pickersgill and Francis Scott Key had precious little in common. In an age during and society in which a person’s gender largely determined an individual’s prospects, Pickergill was a woman, and Key was a man. In an age when the location of someone’s birth largely dictated the future scope of their opportunities, Pickersgill was born in the unmistakably Northern and urban environment of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Key was born in the largely rural environment of Frederick, Maryland—which most Americans of that era perceived to be a Southern town. [Photo: An Early 1800s’ Image of South Second Street in Philadelphia]

The list of Pickersgill’s and Key’s fundamental differences goes on. While certainly hardworking, the family into which Pickersgill was born was of limited means whose male head, Mary’s father, died when Mary was only two years old. On the other hand, the family into which Key was born owned Terra Rubra—a Latin term which translates to “Red Ground”—a plantation made immensely profitable by the family’s many African slaves who served as fieldhands, and Key’s father lived until well after the conclusion of the War of 1812.

In addition, Pickersgill was not educated in the stye that is traditional today; instead, she was educated to help and eventually succeed her mother as proprietor of their family business of flag-making. But Key did enjoy an education most Americans today would consider traditional: graduating in 1796, he attended St. John’s College in Maryland and studied subjects, including law, still taught in colleges around the country today. These educational backgrounds, as much as anything else, dictated the pair’s eventual lifelong careers: Pickersgill became a flag-maker, and Key became a lawyer. Both, however, were good at their jobs. By the time war broke out between the US and Britain in 1812, Pickersgill was well-known to US military leaders as one of the most skillful flag-makers around, and Key possessed the reputation of a diplomatic, easy-to-get-along-with, and successful attorney. [Photo: Image of a St. John’s College Building, Library of Congress]

The story of Pickersgill’s, Key’s, and the English sheep’s highly unlikely collaboration which resulted in the original “Star-Spangled Banner”—also known as the “Garrison” Flag of Fort McHenry—as well as our National Anthem, which ultimately shared the name history gave to Pickerling’s massive “Garrison” Flag—not to mention the propensity of each of the human collaborators to advance, if only from a distance (Pickerling and Key never actually met), the popularization of one another’s greatest patriotic contributions, begins in earnest in 1813. Realizing that Baltimore and thus Fort McHenry, a coastal bastion just east of Baltimore for whose defense he responsible, were likely to be attacked in short order by the British, US Major George Armistead wanted a massive American flag. (Actually, Armistead wanted two massive American flags—one of which was still massive but smaller than the “Garrison” Flag, made mostly of cotton, reserved for bad weather and thus known as the “storm” flag, and lost to history soon after the successful 1814 American defense of Fort McHenry against the British. However, since the “Garrison” Flag emerged as the “Star-Spangled Banner” in the minds of most Americans, we will focus on that one.) In Anderson’s mind, this brand-new flag would not only inspire Fort McHenry’s defenders but would also be large enough so that the would-be British invaders would inevitably see it from even miles away when their ships approached Baltimore Harbor. [Photo: Major George Armistead, Public Domain]

Recommended to Armistead by her brother-in-law, a commodore in the US Navy, Pickersgill received a large party of high-ranking American military officials, including Armistead, as spring turned to summer in 1813. In exchange for a 42’ X 30’, mostly woolen American flag (not to mention a 17’ X 25’ “storm” flag), these officials told Pickersgill, US government would pay her $574.44—or somewhere between $9,000 and $11,000 in today’s money. While such a price for a flag today might strike you as exorbitant, given both the massive size of the flag the government requested and the fact that such a flag in that era could only be sewn by hand, Pickersgill’s motivations were inspired more by patriotism that they were by a desire for profit. Not only would Pickersgill necessarily have to employ perhaps ten apprentices and family members to help her sew throughout dozens of long nights to finish the flag in the six weeks allotted to her by the government; she was also responsible for buying a hefty supply of English wool bunting, the type of fabric then most often used by first-rate flag makers. [Photo: An Artist’s Depiction of Pickersgill and Her Team Working on the “Garrison” Flag]

This is where our handful of English sheep comes in. While there is certainly no evidence to suggest that these sheep were anything other than patriotic animals wholly loyal to Britain, the wool shorn off them by their owners, sold to merchants, and then shipped to the US and acquired by Pickersgill was positively traitorous. Employed by Pickersgill throughout the time she spent making the flag, a collective weight of a whopping almost 50 pounds of this English wool bunting would be far and away the primary component composing the “Garrison” Flag (only the stars were made of cotton). Ultimately, though, while we can always be grateful to the sheep who lent parts of themselves to be sewn into the most famous flag in our nation’s history, this is where their part in our story comes to an end.

But while today we can laugh at the irony that our original “Star-Spangled Banner” is made up of a fabric produced entirely by English animals, shorn by English shepherds, and sold by English merchants, we should take Pickersgill’s efforts completely seriously. In just six weeks, she and her subordinates hand-sewed an incredibly large and heavy US flag with fifteen stripes (until 1818, the national tradition was to add both a stripe and a star for each newly-admitted state) and fifteen stars. Pieced together mostly from English sheep’s wool bunting, this “Star-Spangled Banner” would palpably contribute to our country’s survival during the immensely trying British bombardment of Fort McHenry in September 1814, inspire Key’s poem “The Defence of Fort McHenry,” which would soon come to share the name given to Pickerling’s own flag and emerge as our National Anthem, and ultimately symbolize our national narrative and character. [Photo: The “Garrison” Flag, or the Original Star-Spangled Banner]

Part of the Chesapeake Campaign, which, up until September 1814, had been an American humiliation that included the wanton incineration of Washington, D.C. by victorious Redcoats, the British bombardment of Fort McHenry was the culmination of what became known to history as “The Battle of Baltimore.” After the Americans checked the British infantry and killed its vaunted commander at the Battle of North Point just east of Baltimore, British Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane directed his seventeen ships, including one which specialized in spewing the technologically innovative and immensely destructive Congreve Rockets, to advance through the channel connecting the Patapsco River with Baltimore Harbor and wreak havoc upon Fort Henry.

While actually having just performed a diplomatic national service by vouching for the character and thus securing the release of a Maryland doctor imprisoned on one of these British ships as opposed to being a prisoner himself, the 35-year-old Francis Scott Key found himself confined, along with a friend and the doctor whom he’d just rescued, by the British to a “truce ship” tied to one of their warships until Baltimore’s fate had been decided. This confinement left Key—usually a person of action who did everything he could help those people, places, and ideals he valued—feeling quite helpless. After all, in his nation’s most desperate hour of need, Key could do nothing to help his fellow countrymen as they braved an extraordinarily protracted and quite merciless hail of metallic missiles and screeching, flashing Congreve Rockets engineered by the up-to-that-time most impressive and dominant navy in world history to kill all the American defenders and terrorize Fort McHenry—and thus Baltimore—into submission. [Photo: An Artist’s Depiction of the British Bombardment of Fort McHenry, Public Domain]

For approximately twenty excruciating hours, from the morning of September 13 to the very early morning of September 14, Key looked on as the British who had detained him blasted away at Fort McHenry. While Key almost certainly witnessed both the “Garrison” Flag and the “storm” flag flying proudly and defiantly above the fort over the course of the entire bombardment, most historians are confident that it was the “Garrison” Flag which Key viewed as night set in on September 13 and dawn broke the next morning. The realization that Fort McHenry was undemolished and unconquered—facts confirmed by the continued presence of Pickersgill’s “Garrison” Flag, full of holes from British shells but still fluttering boldly and proudly over the fort—that morning outside Baltimore proved cathartic for Key. Against all odds, Key’s native country—whose inhabitants had already defeated the British once a generation earlier but were still doubted by the world’s strongest powers and positively scoffed at by the British—had withstood the most savage blows His Majesty’s Navy could deliver upon it.

Created by Pickersgill, purchased by the US government, and flown proudly by Armistead, the “Garrison” Flag still serves an important symbolic function, although now its home is a museum instead of a fort. Taken home as a precious souvenir by Armistead at some point between 1815 and 1818, the “Garrison” Flag passed to Armistead’s wife when the major died and then through subsequent generations of their family upon each owner’s passing. In 1912, the flag’s final private owner donated this original “Star-Spangled Banner” to the Smithsonian Museum of American History, where it resides to this day in silent but exuberant celebration of Pickersgill’s patriotic contribution in making the flag, Fort McHenry’s garrison’s patriotic contribution in defending the flag, and the general flourishing of the US since its September 1814 crisis. [The “Garrison” Flag On Display at The Smithsonian Museum of American History, Fair Use]

Finding himself profoundly moved by his overwhelming relief and immense pride which quickly propelled him into a state of joy and creativity, Key soon engaged himself in writing a poem to commemorate this unprecedented national achievement. Originally, Key called his four-verse tribute to our country “The Defence of Fort M’Henry.” But, although the point is still controversial amongst historians, some of the most recent scholarship suggests that, from the very beginning, Key intended that the lines he fervently jotted down aboard that boat be sung to the tune of “To Anacreon in Heaven.” A drinking anthem popular amongst the members of an exclusive British club, “To Anacreon in Heaven” featured a tune first written down in the 1770s, and Key either wrote “The Defence of Fort M’Henry” with this tune already in mind or realized that the tune was perfect for his poem’s lyrics and standards soon after he finished writing.

By the time Key and his two fellow American detainees were returned to Baltimore on the afternoon of September 16, 1814, this Baltimore attorney who had so willingly assumed the roles of both a diplomat and a poet in this time of national crisis realized that his poem was a unique and perhaps even unprecedented achievement in the US’ short history. Here, in Key’s own poignant and sincere words, was a set of verses testifying not only as to what Key believed were quintessentially American qualities—like perseverance and a never-say-die mentality even in the face of seemingly impossible odds and the fiercest of enemies—but also as to the undeniable rallying effect of the US flag on American defenders of Fort McHenry and the sobering repercussions it had on the British. [An Artist’s Depiction of Francis Scott Key Grandly Surveying Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry]

On September 20, the Baltimore Patriot published “The Defence of Fort M’Henry,” and, a short time later, Key himself republished the poem together with instructions for singing it to the tune of “Anacreon in Heaven,” adopting the name “The Star-Spangled Banner” for this ode to America whose emotive power already seemed irresistible to a great many US citizens. The song prevailed for three-quarters of a century as one of a few songs most commonly but unofficially associated with American patriotism and values until 1892, the year in which the US Navy adopted it as its official anthem. During World War I, President Wilson ordered “The Star-Spangled Banner” played at many official and nationally significant occasions, and, in 1932, President Herbert Hoover signed a law officially making Key’s tribute to America the United States’ National Anthem. [Photo: One of the First Printed Copies of Key’s Poem, Library of Congress]

Let’s examine the first verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner” stanza by stanza to better appreciate just how perfectly Key managed to unite what he witnessed at Fort McHenry on the night of September 13 and the morning of September 14 with Americans’ nascent yet quickly swelling conviction that they were uniquely gifted in both patriotism and perseverance.

Oh, say, can you see

By the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we watched

At the twilight’s last gleaming?

In the first stanza, Key immediately transports members of his audience to his front-row seat on the truce ship during the British bombardment of Fort McHenry by repeating—and almost assuredly posing in more exalted language—the agonizing question he either asked himself or his fellow American detainees on the morning of September 14: Is it possible with the early morning sunlight to still see the inspiring thing we saw until the Sun went down the night before? But while the question seems even more sincere for the mostly straightforward way in which he asks it, Key cleverly imbues the song’s initial stanza with two mysteries designed to hold first-time listeners in suspense: first, he doesn’t specify in the first stanza what the “What” of the stanza’s third line actually is, and, second, he leaves the question glaringly open-ended.

Whose broad stripes and bright stars

Through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched,

Were so gallantly streaming.

In the second stanza, which is actually simply long phrase modifying the “What” of the first stanza, Key fleshes out his original question by presenting imagery like “gallantly streaming… broad stripes and bright stars.” Such imagery Is highly suggestive—if not proof positive—that the “What” of the first stanza is indeed the American flag and thus puts one of the two critical mysteries raised by the first stanza mostly to rest. At the same time, Key enhances an audience member’s sense of being present at the bombardment of Fort McHenry with the contention that “we”—that is, he and his American companions on the truce ship but also a word also undoubtedly meant to provide listeners with a sense of inclusion—“watched… the perilous,” or dangerous, “fight [over] the ramparts”—that is, the fort’s exterior, built-in defenses. [Photo: An Artist’s Depiction of Americans Defending Fort McHenry Overnight Against the British Bombardment]

And the rockets’ red glare,

The bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night

That our flag was still there.

In the third stanza, Key’s description of the continuation of the British bombardment throughout the night of September 13-14 climaxes just as the voices of the song’s performers usually rise to their highest pitch. Here, Key keeps the imagery uncomplicated and relies on a simple rhyme to emphatically convey to the song’s listeners the ironic truth that the British missiles fired off that fateful night served more to highlight the perseverance of Fort McHenry’s defenders and their flag than they did to kill members of the fort’s garrison or subdue the fort itself.

To frame it in terms of songwriting strategy, Key employs a minimalist approach ironically to maximize the explanatory and emotive impacts of his words. The line “And the rockets’ red glare” is an obvious reference to the British use of the screeching, terrifying, and immensely deadly Congreve Rockets, while the line “The bombs bursting in air” is just as obviously an acknowledgement of the hail of British mortar shells Fort McHenry’s garrison endured that night. Nevertheless, Key carefully stresses with the stanza’s final line, the British spewing of these various bright missiles actually served to help pensive Americans witnessing the bombardment that night by providing them with “proof” of the garrison members’ refusal to fold—and thus with merciful psychological relief—more than it served to kill the fort’s steadfast defenders. [Photo: An Artist’s Depiction of British Ships Firing Artillery at Fort McHenry, NPS]

Oh, say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the free

And the home of the brave?

In the final stanza, Key dramatically concludes his narrative of the American triumph at Fort McHenry and tribute to the indomitable national spirit which, in 1814, was still only just beginning to make itself famous throughout the world but nevertheless palpable just off the coast of Baltimore by repeating, at least in substance, his original question of the first stanza: Is the American flag still flying? Fascinatingly, Key never explicitly answers this twice-iterated question; instead, a careful reading of the third stanza confirms that the flashing British missiles proved “That our flag was still there” throughout much of the night of September 13-14 but offers no such reassuring evidence as to the state of the American cause when the Sun began to rise the next morning.

Yet whereas this question in the first stanza serves as a sincere, almost desperate plea for practical evidence of the survival or capitulation of Fort McHenry, in the final stanza, Key asks this question rhetorically. Suddenly, this inquisitive refrain transforms from an invitation for audience members to share in Key’s acute anxiety as the Sun began to rise over Fort McHenry on September 14, 1814, to an invitation for audience members to position themselves precisely in the moment in which they are singing or hearing the song. In such moments, Key forcefully concludes, as long as the US flag flies, its presence will serve as a testament to the endurance of both American liberty and American courage. [Photo: The American Flag Hangs Proudly Over Part of the Pentagon Damaged On 9/11]

Cart (0)

Limited Time Offers

Free Pocket-sized U.S. Constitution

Free Limited Edition 250 Baseball Cap

Free Prestige Home Flagpole Kit

American History Unfurled: How Our Flags Shaped Our History and Our History Shaped Our Flags

Explore More Stories Behind The Stars and Stripes